Beneath
by virgo79
Summary: Sequel to Salvage. Here be monsters.
1. Chapter 1

Characters from the movie aren't mine. The crew of the _Northern Beacon_ is. They all had to promise to play nice together.

I pulled a year out of the air here, simply because I didn't think a log entry would be without one, and as Disney didn't let historical accuracy get in the way of everyone's fun with the film, there isn't too much point in trying to play chronological pigeon holes now.

BENEATH

_8th May, 1685_

_We are three days from Tortuga, where we will re-provision and attempt to turn a profit on some of what was taken from the _Charybdis _eleven days ago. I am eager to be rid of it; the crew has been uneasy, and the weight of coin in their pockets may settle their nerves._

_There are some of them who have expressed a wish to be lightened of _all_ we acquired from that ghost ship. Several want me to put off the survivor, the boy Sparrow, when we dock. Still others press to know when I will offer him the articles to sign. I have no answer for either camp, for this is not a decision I will make lightly. The lad has a knack; he's not put a hand to the lines nor a foot to the decks wrongly since he's boarded. I see ability in the boy, ability that some of my men fifteen or twenty years his senior will never hope to have. _

_Yet still I have not offered him a place in my crew. He loves the sea but not the sword. Sailor the boy may be, but a fighter, I fear, he is not. Turner gave him a bit of a trial; he assures me Sparrow knows the sword well enough, but harbors a dislike for using it. My quartermaster tells me this is not a weakness in a man, and I remind him that it _is_ a liability in a pirate. What amusement I find in so accomplished a killer as Turner waxing pacifistic, I keep to myself._

_Turner is the other reason I am undecided on whether Sparrow will stay or go. My quartermaster has become uncannily fond of the boy, and there is little doubt in my mind that if I set the lad on land and bid him God speed, I will lose Turner as well. He was forced by circumstance to leave his own child. I think he will not easily be parted from this one. And I am not so foolish as to let such a crewman as Turner go without careful consideration._

_I have given myself 'til we reach Tortuga to make up my mind._

N. Yearwood, Captain 

………………………

Bill Turner stared at the flickering patterns the lantern cast across the ceiling of his tiny almost-cabin, lying on his back in his hammock, one arm stretched to rest just above his head, and waited. It was approaching midnight, and the quiet in his quarters endured.

He would have liked to take that as an encouraging sign, but the last few nights' experience had taught him better. Bill had been learning a great deal lately.

The subject of his education slept sprawled in the little space's second hammock, one arm and the opposite leg dangling haphazardly off their respective sides. Bill could only assume Jack employed the same talent that kept him aloft in the _Beacon's_ rigging, as light and sure as a spider on its silk, to keep himself from tumbling out of his bed at night. Whatever it was, it seemed to be involuntary, as reflexive as drawing breath. Maybe it was simply the utter and complete absence of any fear of falling. Jack had no fright of heights whatsoever. Nor of storms, as Bill had learned three days prior when they failed to outrun a squall, and Jack had gone about helping trim the canvas with a rather maniacal grin of enjoyment on his face, which hadn't washed off even when the portside rails dipped into the waves and they'd all gotten vivid belts of bruises where their safety lines bit tight 'round their waists. All of them except Jack, who hadn't bothered with a line, and was damned lucky he hadn't ended up with a bruise or three of his own when Bill found out afterwards.

Jack hadn't even looked all that concerned when Bill had him backed up against the bulkhead, cursing the air blue eight inches from the younger man's face and assuring Jack that Bill would, so help him God, beat him like a redheaded stepchild and drop his skinny arse over the side himself if he ever pulled anything that fucking stupid again.

There was no wrath, no trial, no challenge that man or ship or nature could throw at Jack that Bill didn't see the young man face fearlessly.

Rather, it was a faceless fear that was Jack's lone, unrelenting torment.

For a week after his rescue from a ship that had become little more than a floating coffin, Jack hadn't slept. And when he finally slept, he dreamed. Though that word was, in Bill's opinion, grossly inaccurate. One night had seen half the crew brought down on them by Jack's screams before Bill could wake and calm the boy.

A hitch in breath that wasn't his own opened Bill's eyes, which he'd closed with no true anticipation of sleep. He lay unmoving, listening.

There came another tiny gasp, and another, and then a thin, keening moan. The loose, sprawled body shuddered once, violently, and curled itself into a ball, like a fist clenching.

Bill swung himself soundlessly from his hammock and moved to stand beside Jack's. He combed long hair out of Jack's closed eyes, and ran a thumb lightly over the fretful furrows in the boy's brow. "Shhh, Jack. Just sleep."

Jack mumbled something, coiling in on himself more tightly, his fingers knotting in the hammock. Bill closed his hand over Jack's, feeling the white knuckles quiver with tension. For a moment, Jack's whole body tensed, and Bill held his breath, waiting for the wave to break.

That moment stretched out, and then Jack sagged, the lines of his body loosening. The fingers clenched beneath Bill's hand uncurled, just a little, but he waited until he felt them go completely lax to break the contact. Bill remained where he was until he heard Jack's breathing turn soft and steady, and then he straightened with a relieved sigh.

Bill eased back into his own hammock, and this time made room in his bed for fatigue. He found the heaviest weight in his body had moved from his chest to his eyelids, and they closed much easier for it.

By a quarter past midnight, Bill was sound asleep.

………………….

When the lethargic murk of satiation began to ebb, she roused, with old blood on her tongue and new sounds in her head.

This place was _different_.

She knew before her eyes opened that she was not where she had been, because _there_ had been made silent and _here _was full of sound and movement, shuddering down from somewhere far above her.

_There_ had not smelled like this, either. At first, maybe, but not after. Not when she had crawled down into her resting place. The tips of her tail twitched, recalling the scent.

She must have slept for a very long time, because she was beginning to feel hungry again. It was not enough to drive her to move yet, though, and so she lay in her small, dark space, and listened.

So much noise. There must have been so many of them. Maybe more than there had been in the other place. She traced a claw under the curve of one breast, thinking on that.

Maybe more.

………………..

In the hold of the _Northern Beacon_, stowed with the rest of the plunder taken from the _Charybdis,_ sat a long box, about the size one might expect guns to be stored in. It had been heavy, too; about the weight one would think a crate holding weapons might be. It had been carried carefully, care taken to make sure it wasn't jostled too much in its moving, since jostling a box full of guns was never a wise idea. The men responsible for its relocation had been very careful. They'd been knee-deep in precaution. And, unfortunately, waist-deep in assumption.

Somehow, in the haste of looting, no one had taken the time to look inside.

…………………...

Cathleen was making short work of his buttons through an adroit and creative use of both fingers and teeth when Bill's consciousness was fragmented by screaming. The dream actually hung on long enough for him to unceremoniously dump his wife on the hardwood floor in front of their fireplace as he bolted to his feet. Then it slipped away, and Bill woke to find himself thrashing free of his hammock.

"Jack!" he croaked out hoarsely, his voice even less awake than his legs.

Jack sat upright, stiff and still, save for the tremor coursing visibly through him. He gave Bill no reply, his breathing harsh and uneven as he tried to will his muscles out of their rigidity, the back of one hand pressed hard against his mouth to stifle the noises he'd woken himself making.

Then there were arms around him, and Jack gave in and let himself shake, because they felt like they were holding tight enough to keep all his bits and pieces from rattling apart. He discovered he was just a little too currently exhausted and recently terrified to bother with being humiliated, and if Bill minded at all that Jack had once again screamed the both of them out of sleep, he gave no indication of it as he tucked Jack's head beneath his chin.

"'M sorry, Bill," Jack muttered after a while. "I just…I can't…"

"No, lad, you can't," the elder man replied gently. "They'll go when they go, and we'll just bide our time 'til then. All right?"

Jack nodded his head where it rested.

"There you are, then. It's all right now, lad. There's nothing to be afraid of anymore." And he added, because he thought he was telling the truth, "I promise."

TBC 


	2. Chapter 2

The usual disclaimers apply. I'm not making any money off this (so I have to go back to work tomorrow. Dammit anyway.) Also – and I think I neglected to mention this in the first chapter – there's a sprinkling of strong language in this one. (I'm sure you're all stunned by the appearance of strong language in one of my fics, right?) Hey, they're sailors. Come on.

BENEATH 

pt 2

virgo79

"Your little sparrow's uncommon quiet today."

Captain' Yearwood's voice drew Bill's gaze briefly away from Jack, who, across the _Beacon's_ damp deck, was beginning his ascent to tend a damaged sheet. Yearwood's bright blue eyes followed the young man aloft, his face neutral and observant. To the ear of one who didn't know better, he might merely have been making idle conversation.

"He didn't sleep well last night," Bill replied, warily. Yearwood's conversation was never idle. He broke his silence with purposes, not noise.

"And neither did you, I'll wager." Yearwood adjusted the brim of his hat in attempt to keep a bit more of the fine, drizzling rain filling the air like over-ambitious mist off of his face. "Happening a lot lately, isn't that?"

Bill cottoned to their course, but not its destination. He turned to face his captain more squarely. "It's a persistent difficulty, yes," he acknowledged, briskly.

"Persistent," Yearwood echoed, squinting in the milky grey-white glare of the morning. "O' course, persistence and permanence both start out looking very similar."

"With all respect, sir," Bill returned, "I don't hear any music, and you're not that pretty a partner, so suppose we quit dancin' around whatever it is you want to say."

Yearwood's grey moustache quirked as he glanced up at his quartermaster. "You're a pushy son of a bitch, Bootstrap, y'know that?"

"The only person who ever got foreplay out of me was my wife."

The captain snorted, but the mirth didn't linger long. "Then I'll come right to it. I'm not convinced Sparrow's fit to crew with us long-term."

Bill absorbed this, and took his time in replying. "That so? I'd been getting the impression you were rather taken with his abilities."

"Didn't say I wasn't. He's a clever lad. Scary clever, even. But there's more to it than that, and you know it as well as I."

"And that 'more' is worth turning away someone who courts a ship the way Jack did in that storm?"

"That's precisely what I'm trying to decide, Turner." Yearwood turned and began to walk the deck, Bill falling into step beside him. "I need to know if he's going to be a lick of use in a raid. If he's not dealin' so well with the last bit of bad water he drifted into--"

"He's dealing just fine, Captain. I imagine if you or I was shut up inside a boatful of half-eaten dead people, dozing off would be something of a challenge for us, too."

"Don't get so bloody defensive, Bootstrap. I don't begrudge him his demons, but I need to know they aren't going to choke him someday when I need every hand aboard ready and steady."

"You're not seriously comparing what that lad lived through to a raid," Bill scoffed.

"The question, Turner, is will _he_ compare them?" He glanced sideways as Bill expelled his breath in a frustrated huff. "I'm a bit concerned about his effect on you, as well."

Bill looked incredulous. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning you need to be able to think about this like a pirate and not a man who abandoned his child."

Bill froze mid-stride, and glowered at Yearwood with fire spreading behind his eyes. "I think it would be best, sir, if you didn't rely on things you have no fucking knowledge of to make your point."

Yearwood raised his chin, and there was neither anger nor apology in his face. "I know that if I put Jack Sparrow off my ship when we reach Tortuga, I'll be down two men when he goes." He waited for a rebuttal, and when he didn't get one, prompted, "Am I wrong about that?"

Bill stared him down, then took a deep breath, turning to look out across the rain-spattered sea. "No," he ceded quietly, leaning on the gunwale.

Yearwood nodded. "So the question then becomes, what can I expect from you if the lad stays on? Is he going to be a crewman, or a distraction?"

The fire in Bill's gaze had cooled, and continued to do so, as he turned back to the other man. "I've never had any trouble doing what you've asked of me, Captain," he stated levelly.

"Aye," Yearwood granted. "But you've never given a damn before now, either."

And to that, it seemed, the _Northern Beacon's_ quartermaster had no response.

……………………

His task finished, Jack tucked the thick needle and heavy thread into the pouch on his belt, and dallied a while on his perch among the sails. He tipped his head back, savoring the feel of the cool, moist air here, high above the bustle of business on deck. The _Beacon_ rocked gently on a sleepy grey sea, and Jack rested in her embrace, lulled by her swaying. He pushed rain-damp hair behind his ears, blinked the fine, fresh water out of his lashes and tasted it on his lips when he ran his tongue over them.

_If I could sleep right here I'd never dream of anything but flying._

The ship leaped up abruptly just then, jostling him enough to make his eyes pop open, as if in playful reminder of why that wouldn't be a good idea.

"You wouldn't drop me, you old dear, and you know it," Jack murmured to the ship, chuckling.

Still, he'd probably lingered as long as he should. With a sigh, Jack began his climb down.

……………………..

In the close quiet of the hold, wood creaked, out of sync with the slow, regular motion of the ship on the water.

From inside the long box came the hushed, rasping sound of weight shifting in a tight space. The box's lid shuddered, straining against the buckled leather bindings holding it in place.

Time passed, and walls of the box groaned, resisting the force trying to warp them from their proper shape and structure. Finally there came a loud, ringing snap, as one of the leather straps succumbed, bursting loose of its buckle. For a few moments after, there was patient silence.

Then one end of the lid lifted, allowing for a gap that was barely more than an inch at its widest point to appear.

Four long fingers, stretched between with translucent, dark-veined webbing and mottled in patterns of green-black and watery grey, slid through that gap, flexing and curling up to grasp the edge of the lid. Wicked ivory claws ticced and tapped their darkened points against the wood. Then the fingers slid along the narrow opening, down towards the second of the leather straps.

TBC 


End file.
